


hand covers bruise

by adreadfulidea



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6483643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took them three days to drive to Florida because Karen kept insisting on doing normal person things like stopping to eat or sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Atticus Ross song. If I were a more patient person I'd finish this whole story before posting it, but I got swept away by this pairing and here we are. Everyone loves a WIP, right?

 

 

The sky looked different in the city. Light was pollution, here: neon signs that burned all night, rows of cars travelling along dark roads, street lamps one after another. It created a greenish glow, a sickly halo that descended over Manhattan as soon as the sun set. You could see the city from space, Karen had been told.

She would say she missed the stars, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had looked for them. Not in New York; not in Vermont. When she tried there was always something in the way. Or maybe that was her eyes.

Karen worked late. She didn’t sleep well most of the time. The doctor gave her pills but the pills gave her dreams. Most evenings she stayed at the paper until the screen blurred and Ellison forced her out, practically stuffing her into her coat and throwing her out the door. “You’re no use to me if you’re falling asleep over the keyboard,” he’d say, without acknowledging for a second that he was also burning the midnight oil. He made up an excuse to walk her to her car, every single time.

She wore flats instead of heels now, because she might need to run. Her new apartment wasn’t even in Hell’s Kitchen. She checked her backseat before she got into her car, and started it by remote. Just in case.

 

She never called Matt, and he never called her. There were times she thought she saw a streak of red along a rooftop out of the corner of her eye, but it was always gone when she turned her head.

 

Foggy stopped by her office. Ben’s articles were still on the walls - she would never take them down. She hadn’t put any of her own pictures up, either. There weren’t many that she wanted to look at.

He walked slowly around the edge of the room, hands in his pockets. The suit was one she hadn’t seen before; dark gray with a subtle pinstripe. There was no way Foggy picked it out.

“He was kind of a bigshot, huh?”

“The biggest.” Karen leaned back against the edge of her desk. The inside of her mouth tasted bitter, the way it usually did when someone mentioned Ben.

Foggy came over and sat next to her. His suit may have been new but his cologne was just the same. “And now so are you. I knew you had it in ya, kid.”

Karen tucked her hair behind her ears. “Thanks, Foggy. But I don’t think I can make any claims to fame yet.”

Ellison liked her, but overall her reception in the newsroom was cool. It wasn’t like she could blame them. Ben’s office was prime real estate and she was a nobody. Sometimes she thought about asking for a cubicle instead, but it seemed so ungrateful.

Foggy nudged her with his elbow. “Want to catch me up on the latest gossip? You must know everything by now.”

She smiled. “Guess you’ll have to read the paper to find out.”

“You think I don’t?” Foggy asked, putting a hand on his chest. “I’m wounded. Why, only last week you wrote about - you know, that thing - I swear I’ll remember in a minute.”

Karen swatted at his knee. “Stop. Did you come up here just to distract me? Hogarth must not be keeping you busy.”

“Nah,” he said. “I came to invite you out for drinks with me and Marci. I promise it won’t be at Josie’s.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “Sometime.”

It wasn’t him - Foggy was as comfortable and welcome a presence as any person could be. It was her. She was jagged and strange, so different than she used to be. The only thing that blunted her edges was throwing herself into the minutiae of investigating. Not because it was a thrill, but because putting a story together properly was careful, methodical. A cellphone picture here, a name dropped by a source there, an email sent to the wrong person, a signed credit card receipt. She knew better than anyone what the right list of numbers could do to a human life. Her job was to stitch it back together, to recreate a sequence of events so that the reader could understand. Could see what she did.

Otherwise she was trapped inside her own head. It was like living with a chainsaw whirring next to her ear. Last week a car had backfired while she was walking down the street and she’d slammed, full-body, into a complete stranger in her panicked efforts to get away.

Foggy pressed his lips together and nodded. He didn’t look angry with her, though. He was worried, and that was worse. “The invitation is a standing one, so keep us in mind next time you feel like painting the town red.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I will.”

They went quiet, but the silence wasn’t awkward. It was Karen who broke it.

“Do you ever see him?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t.

Foggy blew out a breath. “Wow,” he said, “she _does_ ask the hard questions.”

“Forget about it,” Karen said. “I - it doesn’t matter. Forget that I asked.”

“No,” Foggy said. His voice was steady and his suit was expensive but he looked tired around the eyes, had as soon as he’d walked through the door. “It’s okay. And I don’t. I haven’t seen Matt in months.”

 

She realised she was being followed on a trip to get toilet paper, of all things. It was late, and Karen tried not to go out after dark unless she had her car (doors locked, doors always locked) but she wasn’t going to drive to the corner bodega for an emergency Charmin run, for christ’s sake. It was all of three blocks away.

It was nice out, still warm but not so much that it would amplify the garbage day smell. Someone was playing salsa, loudly. There were a lot of people in the street; they piled up on the steps outside their buildings or dangled out of convertible windows, yelling over the music and enjoying the last of the summer heat. Karen wore a lavender dress and silver sandals, her hair in a messy bun.

She didn’t feel the tingling on the back of her neck until after she left the store. There was no point in second-guessing herself or debating if it meant anything; Karen slid one hand into her purse and gripped her pepper spray. The other held on to the plastic bag with whitening knuckles as someone moved up behind her.

“Two guys on your tail,” said Frank, falling into step next to her. “Grey hoodie and red shirt, ‘bout ten feet back.”

“Armed?” Karen asked. She barely moved her lips when she spoke and didn’t look at him.

“Don’t think they’re carrying,” he said. “You want to find out for sure, let me know.”

“Wherever it is you think we’re going, the answer is no.”

“Only place I want to go is your apartment,” he said. “I’m just gonna take you home, come on.”

“You mean you don’t know where it is?” Karen asked. She shook her head and met his eye for the first time. His face had healed up, and he hadn’t acquired any bruises any bruises fresh enough for her to notice. “Wow, Frank. You must be slipping.”

“I know where it is,” he said. “I never said I didn’t.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have given you the benefit of the doubt,” Karen said. In her purse her fingers slipped away from the pepper spray.

“Told you that you should’ve shot me,” he said, and that made her want to laugh, which made her angry again; so she didn’t.

She glanced in the side view mirror of a parked car. Now that Frank had pointed them out she could spot the men easily, the quick and focused way they walked without ever closing the gap between them. One of them was watching Frank, not her.

“Honey, why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by?” Karen said, loud enough to carry. She grabbed Frank’s hand and smiled broadly. His fingers twitched in hers. “I would have picked up something nice for dinner.”

For a moment he looked entirely thrown, but he covered it fast. He was a quick study. “We’ll order Chinese,” he said. “No dishes to clean up.”

God, she hoped nobody recognized him. But people were good at explaining away the impossible, she thought, and if someone noticed it could be played off as an unfortunate resemblance. Nothing more and nothing less, and didn’t everyone know that the Punisher was six feet under?

Karen was much better at lying than she used to be.

He tugged her along as they approached the door of her building. To anyone watching it would look eager, a guy trying to get some time alone with his girl. Yeah, Frank knew exactly what he was doing. But so did Karen, and she leaned into him while digging for her keys. It put her in whispering range. “Where are they now?”

“Back by the fire hydrant,” he said. “Pretending to talk to some kids standing there. Asking for directions, I think. Don’t look.”

“I’m not,” she said. Instead she pulled out her makeup mirror and aimed it behind her. Both men were white, about thirty. One a little heavyset, the other slim. Not the most distinctive faces she’d ever seen but she could identify them again if she had to.

Frank almost smiled. “Nice trick, Miss. Page.”

“Not my first rodeo,” she muttered.

He went through the apartment the same way the cops had. Sweeping the closets, the bathroom, under the bed. He didn’t draw a weapon like they had, though. Maybe he didn’t have one on him, or maybe he didn’t need one - Frank was more dangerous with empty palms than most men would be with an assault rifle. And he did other things, like listening at the walls and running a hand along the undersides of the furniture.

Whatever threat he was looking for didn’t materialize. Karen sat at her kitchen table and watched him until he got back on his feet, apparently satisfied.

“You’re good,” he said. “But keep an eye out. And stay away -”

“From the windows,” Karen finished. “Thank you for your services, but I get the point.You can leave now.”

He nodded, tensing up as though he’d been expecting it. Bracing for it. “In a minute,” he said, and on another circle of the room closed all the drapes. When he got the door he paused with his hand on the knob.

“Hey, Frank?” Karen asked. “What was your plan for after?”

“After,” he said, like the word itself was a question.

“After Schoonover,” said Karen. “After the Blacksmith, or whatever else.”

Frank didn’t answer at first and she thought he would go without saying anything at all. He slid her deadbolt open, closed and then open again. “This lock is shit,” he told her, voice clipped. “You should get a new one.”

“How about we make a new rule,” said Karen. “The rule is that you don’t get to give me advice anymore.”

“Yeah,” he said, quietly, and left.

Karen pushed her hair back from her face, her elbows on the table and the toilet paper still in its bag at her feet. She was drained; all those late nights catching up with her. “Frank Castle is dead,” she said to no one in particular. “Long live Frank Castle.”

 

She slept better knowing he was out there, and hated herself for it.

 

A few days after a package arrived for her at the Bulletin. It had been shipped from a hardware store, but there was no customer name on the label. One heavy-duty deadbolt lock, complete with installation instructions.

“Asshole,” Karen said, and threw it in the bottom drawer of her desk.

 

He showed up when she was trying to have a peaceful morning coffee - with plenty of cream and sugar, thank you very much. She’d been waiting outside the shop before it opened. Those dreams again.

(She was sitting across the table from Fisk and then he had his hands around her throat, she was sitting across the table from Wesley and his eye sockets were empty except for the worms crawling out, she was sitting across from her brother and a gun was in her hand and she shot him, she shot him over and over.)

Frank had a black baseball cap on, as though it would disguise anything. But he had an ability to disappear in public. She envied him that.

The chair scraped the floor as he pulled it out. An employee wandered over to see what he wanted, but Frank waved him away.

“You’re supposed to order something,” Karen said. She inhaled the steam from her coffee, tapping the edge of the mug against her lips. “It’s rude not to. They can ask you to leave.”

“You put that lock on your door yet?”

“Remember our rule?”

He leaned forward, dead serious. She didn’t pull back. “This is more important than you being mad at me.”

For a terrible second she wanted to throw her coffee in his face. Because she thought that she could get away with it. No, because she _knew_ she could. She could have tossed hot coffee at him and he wouldn’t lift a finger to defend himself. There was a kind of power in that, a sick temptation that she didn’t quite understand. She wasn’t a violent person. She wasn’t.

Karen’s fingernails pressed against the porcelain of her cup. “Mad isn’t the word I’d use.”

Frank rubbed the side of one knuckle along his mouth. There was a cut on his bottom lip that hadn’t been present the last time she saw him. And his hands were raw again, red from fighting. “No, you said done.”

Karen drank her coffee, briefly closing her eyes to better appreciate the rush of caffeine. “I said dead. But so did you.”

He sat back and looked to the side, away from her. His hands were on the tabletop, fingers spread out like he was proving he was unarmed. “Look, you want me to go and I’ll go. Just say so.”

“Why are you here in the first place?”

“The guys who followed you home the other night,” he said, “they work for Wilson Fisk.”

Karen could actually feel her face drain of color. She must have looked like she was coming off a week of the flu; her hair pulled back because she was too exhausted to do anything about it, bags under her eyes. She set her mug down too fast and slopped coffee onto the table. “Nelson and Murdock helped take Fisk down,” she said. “You must know that. It’s not a surprise he would be checking into everyone who worked there.”

“He ever threaten you?”

Karen licked her lips. Suddenly she was regretting dumping coffee on top of an empty stomach. “I have never spoken to Wilson Fisk.”

He couldn’t possibly know. _Nobody_ knew.

“Never at all.”

“No,” she said, “no, never at all. Not - I was a secretary, okay? I wasn’t even working as a legal assistant back then. Why would he pay attention to me?”

“He is now,” said Frank, and the way he said it made her look at him instead of the swirls of cream in her drink or her chipped manicure. “And he don’t strike me a guy who forgets very easily. Hey, you remember how I looked when I got out of jail? A parting gift from him and his buddies. So you can see why I’m a little -” He stopped and set his jaw. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “A little _bothered_ by the thought of them getting their hands on you.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” Karen asked. “I mean, I could use my job - but Fisk is already in jail, that won’t reach him. And they don’t give you police protection for vague threats.” Brett would listen, if she told him. But he wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Frank’s flat, challenging expression told her everything she needed to know. He didn’t have to say a word. If she let him loose -

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “No. No, okay?” She dropped her voice and leaned in. “You are not shooting anybody over this. We do things my way or not at all.”

“Your way is more dangerous than mine is,” he said. “I wish you’d let me take care of it.”

There was leeway in that ‘let me’. She took advantage immediately. “You came to me to find out what I wanted. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all; you’d do whatever it is you have in mind and I never would have heard about it. Don’t bullshit me.”

“Alright,” he said, and she thought she heard some warmth there or saw it in his face; she was reminded of when she told him he could rot in his jail cell or he could deal with her. Apparently ultimatums were the way to go with Frank. “So you want to ask ‘em nicely?”

“No,” said Karen, offended. “We don’t ask ‘them’ anything. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“I know the kind of shit you get yourself into,” he said. “I saw it up close. Here’s my end of the bargain: you don’t make a move without telling me. I want to be there, understand?”

There were worse things than Frank Castle offering to be her bodyguard, she guessed. It was a compromise she could live with. “Fine,” she said. “ _Unless_ you’re too conspicuous - then you have to, I don’t know; lurk outside or something.”

“I can do lurking.”

“Yeah, I _know_.”

“Then we got a deal,” said Frank, so placidly that Karen immediately regarded him with a suspicious eye. The barista went past, pushing a broom along the floor, and Frank leaned over to tap the guy on the shoulder. “Hey, does she look hungry to you?”

“ _Frank_.”

“Uh, maybe?” The barista shrugged. “We have a pretty good breakfast sandwich. You want that?”

“Shouldn’t start the day without a good meal,” Frank said. “They taught us that in the marines.”

Karen shot him a glare and then sighed. She might as well free the poor kid. “Sure. I’ll have the breakfast sandwich.”

He escaped and left Frank looking far too pleased with himself. Notably, he wasn’t eating. He didn’t even have a coffee yet and Karen felt like demanding he order the sweetest most ridiculous thing on the menu. “You’re a pain in the ass,” she said, and in a fit of childishness reached over and yanked his hat down over his eyes. “And you’re paying.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

The investigation was barely off the ground when two events made the need for it much more urgent: someone took a shot at Karen, and Foggy Nelson’s car exploded.

Frank and Karen were at a gas station, and they were arguing. Later she would forget about what; the telltale pop and whistle of a bullet drove the conflict from her mind. Frank had been pumping gas and was returning the nozzle to the pump. He had his back turned so it was Karen who reacted first.

“Frank, get _down_!” she shrieked and launched herself at him bodily. It was like hitting a brick wall. Still, she managed to knock him off balance and they slammed to the ground in a heap. He pried her off him with a curse, rolling them over so he could shield her and she couldn’t pop back up into the line of fire.

“What the fuck did you just do?”

“Ow,” Karen said. Her knee was stinging and she was sure that she had bloodied it. “Tell me that was actually a gunshot.”

“Yes,” he said, with exaggerated patience. “Now tell me why you threw yourself in _front_ of it.”

“I was warning you.”

Frank was trying to reach into his coat and hold on to her at the same time. It was awkward and she kept getting in the way. “I don’t need you warning me. Did you miss what my job was in this expedition?”

“Frank?”

A gun was in his hand. The nozzle hadn’t made it back to the pump and Karen could smell gasoline on the ground or on his clothes. He started to stand, gritting his teeth. “What?”

“I think they’re gone.”

It was true; there was no hail of bullets, no shower of glass as the windshield tore apart. “Stay down,” Frank ordered, and Karen had no problem listening. She waited it out, hunched down with her hand on the door handle, while he cleared the area. There was nothing but a hole the size of a fingertip in the _Regular Unleaded_ sign above their heads.

“Amateurs,” Frank said.

Karen opened the door and crept in. She was shivering, hard. Too much to drive; she slid into the passenger seat and let him take over. He didn’t ask her if she was okay. Instead he opened the glove compartment, found a loose napkin and pressed it to the scrape on her knee.

“You oughta come stay with me tonight,” he said. “They know where your apartment is.”

She covered the napkin with her own hand. “Where do you live?” It was weird how quickly something like sleeping on the Punisher’s couch seemed normal. Getting shot at on the regular could do that to a gal.

“At a motel,” he said. “Nothing fancy but it’s not a fleabag.”

“Okay,” she said, still wracked by post-adrenaline jitters. She had the urge to bite her fingernails though she hadn’t indulged in that particular nervous habit in years. “I’ll need to stop by my place and pack a bag.”

They were halfway there when Marci called from Foggy’s phone to tell Karen that he was in the hospital.

 

“Hi,” Foggy said. He was sitting on a gurney and there were bandages down to his wrist. “I live here now.”

Karen rushed at him but had to hug him very gingerly. “What the hell happened? You’re doing extreme sports again, aren’t you.”

“I can’t stay away from that sweet, sweet jello,” said Foggy. “Even if I have to be in the burn unit to get some.”

“Oh my god, Foggy. How bad is it?”

Marci unfolded herself from a chair by the bedside. “Second degree. Luckily not over a very large area; they’re sending him home tonight.” She looked pale and upset under all her salon-chair perfection. Karen and Marci weren’t friends or anything but when Karen squeezed her arm she smiled, eyes crinkling up with real gratitude.

“It was an incompetent car bomb,” said Foggy. “Instead of going kaboom it caught fire to the hood, and also me. My jacket took the brunt of the damage.”

“It did actually explode about twenty minutes later,” said Marci. “The fire department had taken over by then.”

“You’d think that I, Franklin P. Nelson, would be worth a decent assassination attempt,” said Foggy. “But apparently not.”

“I promise you’ll always be a number one target in my heart,” said Karen.

He gave her a thumbs up with his good hand. “Exactly how Marci feels about me, right Marce?”

“Foggy, don’t be silly,” Marci said. “My number one target is whoever keeps drinking all my coffee cream at work.”

“Again, me,” Foggy said. “You should - _Matty_?”

Karen turned to see Matt only a few steps behind her. He had moved in so softly she hadn’t heard anything, not even the tapping of his cane. Predictably, he looked like hell. Not beat up - no, he was unmarked but stretched thin somehow, all his angles sharper and meaner.

She wondered what he had been doing to himself. But it wasn’t her business any longer, so she didn’t ask. Let Foggy find out if he wanted. Let someone else try and untangle that gordian knot.

“Hey, buddy,” Matt said. His voice was hoarser, too. “Mind if I come in?”

Karen and Marci moved out of the way to let the boys have their tender reunion. Marci wanted something to drink so they roamed the halls until a vending machine made itself available.

“So I’m thinking this must be a Nelson and Murdock leftover,” said Marci, conversationally, and Karen saw the shark swimming beneath vacation blue water. She leaned against the machine and batted her eyelashes. Her can of coke made a hissing sound when she cracked the tab. “Like bad fish, or a rotten smell from the back of the fridge. Because it sure as hell isn’t coming from anything he’s working on now. And yet Foggy won’t tell me _anything_. Imagine that.”

Karen bit her lip. She could lie, but why bother? “Someone tried to shoot me today. Um, again. Don’t tell Foggy.”

Marci stood up straight. “Good god, Karen. Do you attract bullets? Are you a magnet of some kind?”

“It was Fisk,” said Karen. “Or it wasn’t. Fuck, I don’t know. I’m looking into it.”

“Let me help.” Marci laughed outright at Karen’s shocked reaction. “What? I’m worried about Foggy, okay? He’s trying not to let on but he’s terrified right now. And lawyers can research as well as journalists.”

“I know,” said Karen. “I used to work for a couple of them.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Absolutely,” Karen said. “But we need to be very quiet about it.”

“Oh,” said Marci. Her smile unwound with razorwire sharpness. It was like she had more teeth than she should have. “I’ll be quiet as a church mouse. They’ll never hear me coming.”

 

Frank was waiting in her car, parked a block from the hospital. Karen worked under the assumption that whatever he was driving was stolen, and the last thing she wanted was to get pulled over in the midst of his crime spree. Goodbye, burgeoning career. Hello, downward spiral.

“You have their names,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“What names?” he asked, and she couldn’t tell if he was faking ignorance or not.

“The names of the men who followed me,” she said, and did not let herself think about how he must have gotten those names. “I need them.”

“You decide if you’re going to the cops yet?”

She had considered it. The issue was no longer a single episode of stalking that could be swept under the rug; attempted murder was a whole new ballgame. But Karen knew how overwhelmed the police - even good, honest cops like Brett - were. She didn’t believe any longer that Fisk’s stoolies had been purged from the department. There were too many missing or ‘misfiled’ reports; too many of the usual suspects treating the station like it had a revolving door. Wilson Fisk was in a six by eight cell and everyone kept on dancing to his tune.

And she had no evidence. Only her suspicions.

She buckled up. “I’m taking care of it myself. At least until we have more to go on.”

“I started already,” said Frank. “I’ll show you what I got.”

“That’s forthcoming of you.”

Frank adjusted the rearview mirror. He’d probably already messed around with her radio settings, Karen thought. Or else rummaged through Ben’s tapes again. “I said I was in this thing with you. You don’t believe me?”

“No,” said Karen quickly. She balled her hands up in her lap and frowned. “I - I believe you, Frank. I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

Not used to being honest with anyone, she meant. Not since Wesley; not since Kevin. She was two people all the time, the one that everyone saw and who she _knew_ she was, deep down, where she would never let anyone go.

Frank didn’t press. Either he lacked curiosity about her background or he could read her well enough that he didn’t need to ask. Both possibilities made her uncomfortable, for entirely different reasons.

“I’ll show you,” he said again. “You can take it from here.”

 

Frank’s hotel room was small and neatly kept. The wallpaper was old but not dirty and the sheets on the bed - hospital corners, though whether that was him or a maid was anyone’s guess - looked clean. There was a duffel bag and a couple of large suitcases tucked under the bed; she would bet that there were more weapons than personal effects in them. An institutional orange counter ran along one wall that bore a sink, a microwave and a hot plate. There was nothing like a stove, but there was a small refrigerator. A table, too, next to the front door - the type you could add an insert to if you had company. Not that there was any space for that. It only had one chair, which was the folding kind.

The television was mounted on the wall. Karen sat on the bed and turned it on for something to do.

Frank passed her a battered folder that had been on the table. It had mugshots in it, and a couple of rap sheets. The chair squeaked under his weight when he sat down.

Marcus Altowski and Jason Theriault had lengthly but unimpressive criminal records. Theriault dealt cocaine semi-successfully until a prison term for possession that ended in 2013; Altowski worked as a thumb-breaker and loan shark for the Russians though he wasn’t one. They had ended up minor foot soldiers on Fisk’s crew, only to receive plea bargains on weak charges when he went down. Neither of them were important enough to bother with a trial.

“Seems a strange choice on Fisk’s part,” said Karen. “I know that he has more competent people working for him.”

“He might not anymore,” said Frank. “Not on the outside. Had the whole prison asking how high every time he said jump, though.”

“It’s so weird that you were in jail together.”

“You have no idea.”

“Why did he attack you?” asked Karen. “You didn’t have anything to do with his conviction.”

Frank shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He ever gets out, we’ll square up.”

She could have told him that was stupid because Fisk had the money and power to amass an army and Frank had only himself. Or she could have cautioned him about his habit of forming vendettas against half the planet. “Say hi for me,” she said instead.

That startled a smile out of him. “That’s a pretty demented joke, counselor.”

“You know I’m not a lawyer.”

“Close enough.”

Karen looked around the room. The television droned on above her; the evening news was dwelling on bloodshed, as usual. There was no sofa at all, much less a pull-out. “Do you have an air mattress stashed somewhere? Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“I take the floor, you take the bed.”

“The _floor_ ,” she said. “That’s completely old-fashioned. Why don’t we go ask the management if they have a cot for me?”

“ _I’m_ old-fashioned. Letting a woman sleep on the carpet,” he scoffed, “Chrissakes, my mother would roll over in her grave. I’m ashamed to even think about it.”

When Karen did go to bed he dragged the bedside lamp over to the table. There were components of some gadget he was fiddling with scattered across the pitted surface, tiny wires and computer chips smaller than a fingernail. He had used a solder gun on it earlier and the scent of burning metal lingered in the air. “Is that light gonna keep you up? I can use a flashlight.”

“No,” she said. At home she always slept with a light on. The dark brought things with it that she wasn’t good at dealing with, and she worried about having to get out of bed quickly and becoming disoriented if she couldn’t readily identify her surroundings. Sometimes it helped.

She closed her eyes. Already the pace of her heart was speeding up in anticipation of some unidentified terror. She reminded herself that fear wasn’t weakness. Frank was posted at the door, intent on his task, and that meant nothing worse could get in.

 

Karen woke once, slightly past midnight. She kicked off her blanket and automatically looked towards the exit.

Frank was asleep in the chair, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. The glow of the lamp cast light and shadow across his face. He looked peaceful, almost, except for the deep lines between his eyebrows.

Karen stared, half convinced that he would sense her eyes on him and get up. Ask her what she wanted. But he didn’t stir one bit. She watched the quiet rise and fall of his breathing for a minute before rolling over and falling into her dreams anew.

 

“Stop calling him a snitch,” Karen reprimanded as she pulled into the parking lot. “He’s not a _snitch_ -”

“He is, he is absolutely a snitch -”

“- he is a source, and you should be impressed with him for trying to turn his life around.” Karen shot Frank a look that was intended to be quelling but only served to entertain him further.

“You have a snitch,” he said, grinning crooked and way too charming. “Sorry if I find that funny, Sam Spade.”

“Do you have any pop culture references that are from the last decade? Last several decades?”

“Nope,” Frank said. “This is where you’re meeting the guy?”

She guessed a bakery was an odd place for a clandestine rendezvous. There were families going in and out, parents hand in hand with small children holding cupcakes or cookies. One boy had frosting on his nose that his mother was trying to clean off, while he refused to stop devouring his prize. The building was painted pink and had bubble windows. Cute, in a kitschy way.

But Eric was an addict, and when he was getting clean he craved sugar constantly. When he wasn’t all he wanted was money. Sometimes Karen gave it to him against her best judgement and regretted it for the rest of the day. She hoped today a pastry would suffice.

There was no way Frank could come in with her. Eric was so jittery already - one look at Frank would send him flying out the window, never to return.

“One thing,” Frank said.

“Yeah?”

“You got your gun in your purse?”

“Uh, no,” Karen said. “It’s for home defense, so it stays at home.” The idea of carrying it around with her all the time made her queasy. She was careful, she’d learned how to shoot - wasn’t that enough?

“Didn’t think so,” said Frank. He handed her a handgun, grip first.

“I’m not going to bring that in with me.”

“He’s a junkie. They’re unpredictable.”

“He weighs a hundred and thirty pounds,” said Karen, flatly. “I could fight him off with a bagel. And he’s not a violent person. Most addicts aren’t.”

Frank shifted in his seat. He hadn’t shaved and she could hear the rasp of his stubble when he scratched his cheek. “You don’t know that. You can’t ever know what’s in another person’s head.”

“Neither can you,” Karen said, as gently as she could. “Frank, you’re being paranoid. But I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

The gun had been put away but she could see the the tendons in his wrists flexing, the tension in his neck when he turned his head away from her. God, he was so bad at being a passenger. The whole drive over he’d been twitchy, dying to give her advice or hit the brakes or grab the wheel.

“Guess not,” he admitted, much to her surprise.

“Trust my instincts,” she said. “I was right about you, wasn’t I?”

“I’ll be here,” he said. “If you need anything.” For a second she thought there was some kind of shame in the way he said so, or penance - but then he closed off like a brick wall. Impenetrable.

Eric was at a table, a tall caramel colored drink parked in front of him. He was also high as a kite, which was a disappointment. His eyes showed white all around the edges.

“Hi sweetie,” Karen said, trying for breezy. “You want a piece of pie? I’m buying.”

He could have used it, but he had also told her once that he couldn’t keep anything down when he was lit up. “Not today. I can’t stay long - I’m having problems.”

Karen sat down. She didn’t order anything for herself. “What kind?”

“All of them,” he said, face twisting up. He was visibly sweating. “Got thrown out of rehab for smoking at the wrong time. Can you believe it? Fucking assholes. Then my Mom and her shitty boyfriend - aw, fuck. Who cares.”

“Well, you should stay to finish your drink at least.”

“It tastes funny.” He scraped his fingernail through the condensation on the glass. “I think they made it wrong.”

“Want a new one?”

“No,” he said. “I’m - I’ll finish it. What was it you wanted?”

Karen exhaled. “Okay. There a couple of names - old members of Wilson Fisk’s crew. You’re good at keeping your ear to the ground, so I was wanted to know if you’d heard how they were keeping themselves busy lately.”

He was good at keeping his ear to the ground because no one ever noticed him. He knew it, she knew it - didn’t stop her from feeling guilty. Like she was using him, or coercing him into something he wouldn’t normally do.

He slurped a healthy amount of his frappuccino, so it couldn’t have been that bad. “Sure. Who?”

“Marcus Altowski and Jason Theriault,” she said.

Eric reacted like she’d pinched him. Suddenly he couldn’t stop squirming. “Them. Why the fuck does everyone want to know about them?”

“What?” Karen asked, alarmed. “Who is _everyone_?”

“You, that Manfredi prick - you know him? Do you know him?”

The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint from where. “Manfredi? Eric, what are you talking about?”

“Gangsters and reporters,” he said, desperately. “This is too fucking hot for me. Why’d I get involved in the first place? Forget it, forget it.”

“Eric,” she said. “You think maybe you aren’t thinking straight? I can get you into detox -”

“No,” he said. “I’m out of here. I’m out of this situation, I’m out of this _city_ -”

He stood so abruptly that he sent the glass careening to the floor. Karen tried to stop the descent but couldn’t; shards of glass and frozen coffee exploded into a sticky mess upon impact. She grabbed napkins from the dispenser and tried to clean up, apologizing to the waitresses. “I’m sorry,” she said, “my friend is ill. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” When she looked back, Eric was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for a pause on this weirdly accelerated update schedule, as I want to get another story finished off before I write any more of this one. But I will be back.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

“Does the name Manfredi mean anything to you?” Karen asked Frank when she got back into the car.

His brow furrowed. “Don’t think so. Who is he?”

“I have no idea,” said Karen. Yet she had heard it before - she was certain she had. A client of Nelson and Murdock? One whose case hadn’t turned out well, a sore loser? No, she had been the one handling the files. She would remember him. An associate of Fisk’s? Possible - even probable - but that didn’t settle the question of _who_. Fisk had a lot of associates. Most of them had benefited from his being put away, and would have no reason to go after her or Foggy.

Frank said something in a tone that suggested he was repeating it. “What?” Karen asked, turning towards him.

“I said: how did your meeting go?” Frank asked, again. “That kid help you out or what?”

“Yes,” she said. “Kind of.”

“Kind of.”

“It’s a start.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. When it became apparent she wasn’t going to share with the class he switched on the radio. To give her some privacy for her thoughts, or just to distract himself.

“You gonna need me for anything for the rest of the day?” he asked after a minute.

“No,” she said. “I figured I would drop you off and then go into work. Why?”

“I have business to attend to.”

“Oh,” said Karen. Her stomach churned at the thought of what Frank’s ‘business’ could be. But she very deliberately did not ask. Whatever he was doing was dangerous and likely illegal - and none of her concern. So she would leave him alone, would stay on task. It was better that she didn’t know.

(She would comb through the news later, she knew, searching for anything that might have involved him.)

“I’ll drop you off,” she said. “I told Ellison I’d be late anyway.”

“You can still call,” he said. “If you need to.”

“I won’t,” she said, too quickly. She forgot that his help wasn’t conditional. Whatever he got out of it he kept to himself, and he didn’t expect her to approve of what he did. She knew where he lived, the number for the phone he was using. She could have destroyed him with one phone call. Somehow he knew that she wouldn’t. All of Karen’s betrayals were accidental.

“If you do,” he said, and looked out the window. She thought that would be all but a minute later he continued. “Are you headed back to your place for tonight?”

“Um,” she said. “I guess I’d better.” She drove with one hand on the wheel, and picked at the edge of the bandage he’d put on her knee with the other. The car was old and the air conditioning was sketchy so they both rolled down their windows. A breeze lifted her still shower-damp hair off the back of her neck; last night she forgot her hair-dryer at home.

“That what you want?” he asked. “I’m not kicking you out. You can stay for longer.”

You slept in a chair, she thought. And the unspoken criticism: that her place, her well-being, continued to be at risk. That she ought to play it safer.

“I can’t let them drive me out of my own life,” she said. “If I do that pretty soon I won’t have one at all.”

“Okay,” he said.

She glanced at him, surprised. He was nodding, still watching the neighborhood go by.

“That’s not a bad way to handle it,” he said. “Be careful but don’t go into hiding. Even in the middle of a war zone life has to go on. People go to school, they go to work, buy food from the market - no one just _stops_. That isn’t how it works.”

“So you’ll leave me be,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Totally alone,” she said. “No looking in my windows or anything.”

He turned his head sharply towards her. “Looking in your - for Christ’s sake, I’m not a _peeping tom_. “

“You broke into my apartment that one time.”

“There were circumstances,” he said. “I think you remember them.”

There were always circumstances. That was the problem. Would she regret it, if she sent Frank away and something happened? What if he blamed himself? Yet she would never be able to tell what the depths of her strength were until she had tested it. And she was good at getting back up again.

“I can’t lean on you forever,” she said. “Even if I’d like to.”

He went quiet again. His dark eyes flicked back and forth over boarded-up casualties of the great recession, kids goofing around during their last days of summer vacation, men and women talking into cell phones, oblivious. He seemed to take in everything. They drove along the road, cut down backstreets that jarred the car with their poorly repaired asphalt and smelled like garbage. She hit the gas instead of rolling up a window.

“You should start carrying your gun.”

“Frank -”

“Just do this one thing,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“And if I do?”

“I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Great. Thank you.” And then, when he smiled a little: “But I’m still keeping my curtains closed.”

 

 

He lingered by the door when she dropped him off, like he couldn’t decide whether to go inside or not. She watched blankly from the driver’s seat until he came back to the car and leaned in through the open window.

“Karen,” he said.

“What?”

“Watch your back,” he said. “Take care of yourself out there. If I read about you in some fucking newspaper I’ll be pissed.”

She blinked, suddenly flustered. “I - of course. I will.”

“Good,” he said, and pointed a finger back at her as he started to walk away. “That’s an order!”

“Screw you, Frank!” she called out, putting the car into gear. But she was grinning as she said it.

 

 

Karen googled the name Manfredi and got a page of scattered, useless results in return. An autobody shop, an ambulance chasing pair of lawyer brothers, a bakery in Queens. She closed the laptop, frustrated. If not an old client, then maybe someone tangentially connected to a Nelson and Murdock case. If she had access to their files -

\- but she didn’t, and she didn’t know what Foggy had done with them. Should she call and ask? When she checked the clock it was already lunchtime and she decided not to bother him. He wouldn’t want her getting involved anyway. Though he knew what her job was - and had no objections - he would never have asked her to put herself out on his account. Foggy wouldn’t expect that of anyone. She even considered contacting Matt, who would certainly be looking at all the same angles she was. But he might stonewall her and she didn’t want to get drawn into another argument. They never went anywhere.

Besides which: she was supposed to be working. Not messing around with her own personal investigations.

It dogged her the rest of the day and all the way home. She stayed up late and finished a story that wasn’t supposed to be filed until next week, so at least her discontented energy went to good use.

Once upon a time Karen used to go jogging to wind down. She liked running best when the weather was slightly chilly and left her warm under her windbreaker but with a cold nose. Since that wasn’t an option any more she had purchased an exercise bike. She put on some exercise clothes and rode it until her legs ached and her back was damp with perspiration. Afterwards she crashed on top of the sheets still wearing her sweatpants, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Fell asleep like that with all the lights on.

The epiphany occurred at 2:00 a.m. on the dot. She popped out of bed, suddenly awake.

She had met Manfredi - Silvio Manfredi - at Ben’s funeral. She remembered him now, a man with a long solemn face and gray hair. He had shaken her hand. Karen was so pleased with herself that she almost phoned Frank to crow in triumph. Then she regained her senses. It was two in the goddamned morning.

She flopped back down. So there was one question cleared up. But it was an answer that only spun out into other questions. Who was Silvio Manfredi to Ben? And why did he have an interest in Marcus Altowski and Jason Theriault?

With a groan she turned over, face-first into her pillow. For once she would like a conclusion to come easily. Delivered by bluebirds to her window, preferably.

 

 

Armed with a full name, Karen set about doing her research in earnest. The facts of Silvio Manfredi’s life were simple enough to find. He was born in Italy and his family immigrated to the United States when he was a young child. They settled in Manhattan on the Lower East Side; at some point a young Silvio started working for the Maggia crime family. He rose through the ranks quickly but got taken down with several other key Maggia figures in the early eighties during a massive sting operation. He’d done ten years in prison, and by all accounts emerged a changed man and lived a quiet life ever after. His family had already moved away from New York - the notoriety likely having driven them out.

She found an old _Times_ article about the trial online. It was accompanied by a courtroom sketch; in the gallery, off to one side, sat a twenty-odd year old Ben Urich.

Karen had to take to the file room again to look up Ben’s old articles. So much of their electronic storage had been wiped out during one of the Avengers’ many crashes into the infrastructure of the city, and anyway - most of Ben’s writing hadn’t been scanned in. Archiving was a work in progress, paid attention to when the paper had time or money for it. Currently they did not, except for one old dusty room.

She cleared cobwebs from boxes and sat on the floor. The trial had been front page news and only some of the work of covering it had been assigned to Ben. Even though he had been writing about the Maggia crew for years before anyone else took a kick at the can. It had been dangerous, in those days, poking at the mafia. Still was. The players changed but the game never did. She wondered if she had that kind of courage. If he had ever been as terrified as her.

Karen kept telling herself she would go visit Doris. Somehow she never managed to.

She could imagine Ben, young and hungry, chasing down leads no one else gave a shit about or were afraid to face. In the picture his glasses had been exactly the same.

“What’re you smiling about?” Ellison asked. He came in with a box under his arm and slid it back on the shelf.

“Nothing,” Karen said. “Just doing some research.” She folded the article she had been reading and put it back down with the others. “You?”

“Retrospective,” he grunted. They were coming upon their eightieth anniversary and the powers that be required a look back at their storied history. Ellison hated the idea, he thought it was a waste of an issue.

“Good luck,” said Karen, cheerfully, because as a new employee she had nothing to do with it.

“Yeah,” he said, and wiped his glasses off on his shirt sleeve. He put them back on his face and looked around. “You ever think we spend way too much time in here?”

“Go for sixties baby boomer nostalgia,” said Karen. “It always works.”

“Page, you should have been a saleswoman,” he said, and left her alone.

Karen smoothed down the creases on one of the newspapers stacked by her knee. It was too old and worn to leave ink on her fingers. The problem with being a reporter was that you couldn’t tell when you were chasing your own tail. Silvio Manfredi might have nothing to do with her current situation or everything. She could have tunnel vision, a fixation on a name that came up by coincidence, and she wouldn’t know until she got to the end.

But she _had_ to get to the end. To do what she could to prevent Wilson Fisk and men like him from getting a foothold in the city again. She owed the ghost of Ben Urich that much.

Karen picked up the article once more and started to read.

 

 

“I knew Ben Urich,” said Karen, stirring in tomato paste. Her apartment smelled like garlic and oregano. “And he died because I - he was investigating Wilson Fisk, too. So if Silvio Manfredi knew him, and he’s asking after Fisk’s men...” She paused, sauce dripping from the spoon. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

“It’s something,” Frank reassured her. There was some static on the line; his phone wasn’t very good. He was driving and she could hear traffic sounds. “It’s more than I got. No one wants to talk about Fisk. What is this guy, the boogeyman?”

No, Karen thought. That’s you.

“Excuse me for using this stupid expression,” said Karen, “but he ‘rose to power’ incredibly fast. He burned all his competitors down. You really don’t know about any of this? Were you overseas?”

“That or in a coma,” he said.

“Right,” said Karen with a brief flash of guilt. She tried not to remind him of his family. “Well, it was a scary time. No one could stand up to Fisk. No wonder they still talk about him like he’s Voldemort.”

“And you and your friends had to tangle with him, huh?”

Karen pushed ground beef around a frying pan with her spoon. It was almost ready to be added to the sauce. “Glass houses, Frank.”

“Fair enough,’ he said. “How’d your day go, otherwise?”

“Fine,” she said. “Why, what does that have to do with anything?”

He cleared his throat. “I was asking to be - I don’t know. _Polite_.”

It occurred to her that it must have been a very long time since he had a conversation with anyone about normal things. The boring or funny anecdotes that made up everyday existence. It was - it was touching, actually. Not that she would ever have let him know she thought so. He would hang up immediately.

“I think one of our section editors is having an affair with our web designer,” offered Karen. “They’re both married.”

“Tell me you didn’t catch them at it.”

“No,” Karen said. “Thank heaven for small favors. But they -”

That was when she heard it. First a scratching and then a heavy rattling at her door. The sound of someone trying to get _in_.

“Oh my god,” she said, going cold all over. The spoon fell to the floor and splattered red spots up one side of her leg. She was barefoot, clad in pyjamas.

“ _Karen_ ,” Frank said in her ear, urgent but steady. “Karen, talk to me -”

For a moment she stood frozen. She couldn’t answer Frank, or move to protect herself, or attempt to escape through a window or onto a fire escape. It was a lizard-brain glitch, the urge to play dead every small animal felt when a predator was nearby. Run, rabbit, run.

And then she exploded into action. “Someone’s here,” she hissed into the phone, and dropped it beside the spoon. Her purse was on the kitchen table; her gun was inside of it. She lunged for them both.

It was sheer terror to stand there in the hall, waiting, with the gun raised in her shaking hands. Her heart lodged itself in her throat and stayed there. But she did it. With one arm she reached out and unlocked the door. The intruder opened it to a faceful of Karen and her firearm.

He was kneeling down when he swung the door open, the screwdriver he was using to break in held in one hand. The blue sweatshirt he wore had the hood pulled up, obscuring all but his mouth and chin.

“Get up,” she said, gesturing with the gun because that was what people did in movies.

He startled. “What -”

“Stand the _fuck_ up,” she snarled. “And tell me who sent you here.”

He put the screwdriver down slowly and did as she told him, hands in the air. They were trembling worse than hers were. And he kept stammering. “I - I’m sor - _I_ -”

“Shut up,” she said, and yanked the hood off.

He wasn’t a man at all, but a boy - maybe sixteen at the very most. He had traces of acne around his hairline and the beginnings of a sad teenage mustache. His eyes were huge and round and rapidly filling with tears.

“What the hell were you thinking, you stupid kid?” Karen asked. She did not lower her gun. “You know how many people in this city are armed? A bit of light B&E can get you killed!”

His face started to crumple. “I wasn’t gonna take anything. I swear!”

“The why are you here?”

“They made me,” he blubbered. “They threatened my little sister.”

Karen dropped her hands to her side with a sigh. She switched the safety back on the gun. “What’s your name?”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Now that she got a good look at him she could see that his clothes were thrifted, the soles of his shoes breaking apart. “Cesare.”

“Okay, Cesare,” said Karen. “Let’s try again. Who sent you here, and why.”

“I don’t know their names,” he said. “They sell drugs in my building sometimes. But they asked if I wanted in and I said yes. I ain’t no junkie, but my sister you know she needs school supplies. And they don’t give out free school lunches anymore, so -”

“ _Cesare_. Focus.”

“Okay,” he said, sniffling. “Okay, right - and then they tell me I hafta come here, and get in, and mess up your place. I said, I don’t know this lady! I have nothing against her! And then they tell me they’ll go after Adelia if I don’t. She’s like, five. She believes in Santa Claus still. So I took the bus up, and - I didn’t think you were home. Please believe me.”

Karen closed her eyes, opened them again. “I do.”

He whimpered and slumped against the doorway.

“I want you to do exactly as I say,” she said, firmly. “No deviations. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, absolutely. Anything.”

“Go to the police station,” she said. “Bring your sister with you. Ask to speak to Brett Mahoney - and _only_ Brett Mahoney. Tell him everything that happened except,” she held one finger up, “do not mention I was involved. Am I making myself clear?”

He nodded so enthusiastically that he resembled a bobblehead in an earthquake. “Yeah. Yeah, I go it. I’ll do just what you say.”

“Now get lost,” she said. “Go!”

He left in the direction of the back entrance, which was lucky because Frank came in the front. His eyes were wild, white around the edges. Ready to dole out violence given the slightest excuse. When he saw her he stopped short and his hands were balled into fists at his sides. “You’re okay.”

“Shit,” she said. “I completely forgot about the phone. I was - busy.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“Someone was breaking in,” she said. “But he was only a kid. I sent him away.”

Frank stepped forward. He traced the scrapes on her doorframe with the tips of his fingers. “To _rob_ you?”

“No,” she said. “To intimidate me. He got blackmailed him into it. Guess who.”

“Fucking - this is nuts,” said Frank. “We have to get you out of here.”

“I don’t need to leave,” said Karen. And she did feel better than she had before, more secure. Could just be the adrenaline. Or the gun in her hand - but even borrowed bravery was better than nothing. “They won’t try the same trick twice. They’re pushing harder because I’m getting close. That's how it’s done. Your lock held, by the way.”

Frank scrubbed a palm over his hair. He hadn’t returned to his pre-prison buzzcut, but the sides were still shaved. “I’m not ever gonna know who shot at us,” he said, “because you’ll give me a heart attack first.”

Karen put her hands on her hips. She didn’t bother protesting. Behind her the pot bubbled merrily away on the stove, reminding her of how hungry she was.

“Want to stay for dinner?” she asked.

 

 

Marci called her while she was knee deep in the financial records of a hedge fund manager, sent to her by his receptionist who was either very helpful or very angry. “I got in touch with my friend from the Justice Department,” she said. “And he had some information on Mr. M.”

“A phone number?” Karen asked. She picked up a pen and found a scrap of paper. “Please say it’s a phone number.”

“Not quite. They didn’t have anything current. But they do know that he’s staying with his son in Florida, and I’ve got an address.”

“Marci!” said Karen. With her left hand she scribbled on the page to get the half-dry ink flowing. “That’s amazing. You’re a genius.”

“ _Well_ ,” she said, indulging in false modesty before giving up all pretense of it. “That’s true. I am.”

Seconds after Karen went back to scanning rows of numbers her phone buzzed again. “...‘lo?” she mumbled, the pen between her teeth.

It was Foggy and he sounded weird. Muffled, as though he was talking with his hand over his mouth. “Was that you who just called Marci? What are you guys doing?”

“We’re best friends now,” Karen said. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“Oh lord,” Foggy moaned, and hung up.

 

 

Karen sat in her car in the _Bulletin's_ parking lot, listening to the phone ring. “Hey,” she said as soon as Frank answered. “How do you feel about road trips?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am assuming that Silvio in the television show shares the same name with Silvio Manfredi of the comics, though the two characters are quite different. I have borrowed from canon where applicable.


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

 

It took them three days to drive to Florida because Karen kept insisting on doing normal person things like stopping to eat or sleep.

They left on a Friday evening so she wouldn’t be absent from the office for quite as long. She’d built up some amnesty lately by being on top of things at work, and she’d lied to Ellison and said she was travelling for a story. He wouldn’t be surprised if it came to nothing; that happened regularly, leads that trailed out or ran into brick walls. Still, she didn’t want to push it. Or look like a teacher's pet who could run off whenever she wanted.

Pity they couldn’t fly. But taking Frank through airport security was impossible.

She packed lightly - just the necessary toiletries, no makeup except for the lipstick in her purse. A few outfits, a couple sets of pyjamas. Her gun, in the bottom of the bag, and a clip of ammo in case she needed it. Her laptop, of course.

She called Foggy before she left to let him know she was going out of town. “Just to get away for a little while,” she said, another falsehood to add to the pile.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, warmly, and she felt terrible. “Give yourself a break. Are you gonna stay with family?”

“Mmhm,” she replied, as noncommittally as she could manage. “So did you talk to Matt about, um - anything that’s been happening?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, a bit. I’m not as angry at him as I was before. Mostly I worry. But it’s… sometimes hard to talk to him, now.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “I haven’t managed to.”

Foggy laughed, and it was a tired, dry sound. “I’ve taken breakups better than this. How embarrassing is _that_.”

“It’s hard,” she said. “No one ever tells you how hard it can _be_ when a friendship gets damaged. I’m glad that things are getting better between you, Foggy. I genuinely am.”

And Matt would watch him. He would make sure Foggy was okay, that he was safe. So Karen could attend to her business elsewhere without guilt.

Probably.

“I think he follows me home sometimes,” said Foggy. “So there’s that.”

“Well,” said Karen, “he _would_.”

Frank came to her bedroom door after she was done her conversation. He’d been waiting in the living room to give her privacy, and knocked even though the door was open. She guessed that was to make up for barging in the other time.

“Ready?” he asked. She nodded and he grabbed the bag off her bed.

“You tell Nelson where we’re going?” he asked, as they headed down the stairs.

So he hadn’t been eavesdropping after all. “No,” she said. “And I definitely didn’t tell him about _you_. I don’t need to be responsible for giving him a heart attack. He was already in the hospital once.”

He put her bag in the trunk with his. She tossed him the keys, and he caught them with obvious surprise.

“Really?” he asked

“I’m tired,” she said. “Besides, you get as restless as a toddler if you don’t have something to do.”

“I do not act like a _toddler_ ,” he said. But he sure didn’t complain about getting to drive.

He moved out onto the road, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. Karen took a paperback out of her purse - why not, she wasn’t the one behind the wheel - and watched her neighborhood go by. It didn’t look real. Like the smeared pastels of a child’s drawing. Or her dreamy ideas of the city, the ones she’d had as a kid, before she got here and learned how it actually was.

“I’m still picking the music,” she said.

 

 

She didn’t read her book very much. Instead she looked out the window, especially once the sun started to drop towards the horizon. Or she looked at Frank.

“What,” he said.

“Isn’t this kind of weird?” she asked. “Being out here like this, without being followed by a hail of bullets or anything?”

“Look,” he said, “If that’s starting to seem normal to you then you’re gonna need more help that I can provide.”

She laughed, just a little bit, and adjusted her seatbelt. “It’s normal to you.”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s how I know it shouldn’t be for _you_.” He turned his head towards her, his expression inscrutable. “You ever think of moving?”

“And leave New York?” she said, brightly. “What kind of crazy person would do that.”

But she felt better, with the city in the rearview mirror. Better and better, the further away she got.

They drove until just past dark, somewhere beyond Washington. The headlights approaching them on the other side of the highway moved like fireflies, bobbing along and then disappearing. Finally she put her hand on Frank’s arm and suggested they pull over - she didn’t want to sleep in the car.

“Right,” he said, sounding surprised, like he was snapping out of something.

She paid for a roadside motel. It looked like every place from here to California, two levels with the top being surrounded by a white metal railing. A sign outside that must have been there since the sixties declared they had color TV.

Karen got them one room, because her funds weren’t unlimited and she didn’t want Frank getting busted for using stolen credit cards or whatever it was he did to sustain himself.

“I thought -” she said, hesitant.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll get the bags.”

The room had striped wallpaper and orange bedspreads. A small TV - the old tube-style - sat on a cabinet at the foot of one of them. There were drawers for clothes, and a closet, but they wouldn’t be staying long enough to use either.

Frank put the bags on the beds. She unzipped hers and dug through it until she found the ziploc with her shampoo and conditioner inside.

“You mind if I take the shower?” she asked.

“No, go ahead.” When she glanced back over her shoulder he wasn’t looking at her. He was peering out into the parking lot, through the blinds, making sure nothing was following.

 

 

The next day started peacefully enough. Karen woke up hating everything, but she always did in the mornings.

“Ugh,” she said, turning over to block out the sunshine streaming in on her face. She had to pull the blankets right up over her head to achieve it. Even inside the room it was humid.

Frank walked by, snickering. Her bare feet were sticking out and he poked one of them. “Up and at ‘em, soldier.”

She pulled the blanket back down roughly and glared at him. It was spoiled by her hair falling into her face in a stupid way. “I’ll kick your ass, Frank.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “Keep it up and I won’t give you any of the coffee I bought.” He gestured to the side with his thumb, like he was hitchhiking.

She sat up and looked; there was a cardboard carrier with two cups of coffee in it. Not Starbucks or anything recognizable - unmarked white styrofoam with flat plastic lids, likely from the motel’s attached restaurant. It was strong enough that she could smell it from where she was.

“Thank god,” she said.

“Oh, you like me now,” he said. He walked into the bathroom, peeling off his shirt as he went.

She stared at his bare back and then at the closed door before flopping back down to the sheets. The shower started up, water drumming on porcelain.

“Fuck,” she said, and closed her eyes.

They ate breakfast in the motel restaurant. Someone had gotten the idea to do it up like a fifties diner, with black and white checked linoleum on the floor and a counter striped with chrome. The booths were robin’s egg blue. It was cute, in a kitschy way. Karen had pancakes and tea, Frank eggs and orange juice. She checked her phone for messages but there were none.

“So what are you gonna do when we get there?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “Going to approve my plan?”

He set his glass down. “You have one, right? You’re not going in there half-cocked. Or by yourself.”

Frank was one to talk. “No,” she said. “I wasn’t going to suggest that I was. I’m going to interview him. You know - the thing I do for a living. You’ll be there.”

“I read up on the guy,” Frank said. “He was a tough nut to crack, back in the day.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Karen. “I read all the same things you did. But - Silvio Manfredi knew Ben. He was at the funeral. He spoke to Doris, Ben’s wife. That must mean something.”

“Okay,” said Frank, smooth and easy, “but what?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know yet,” she said.

 

 

Two hours or so after lunch the humidity got the better of them and it started to rain. Long, black clouds rolled in over the horizon and the wind picked up enough to whistle through the open windows of the car. A raindrop hit the windshield, then another. Soon enough it was pouring down.

The radio cut out, descending into static. Frank turned it off. Ahead of them an eighteen-wheeler pounded the slippery pavement, the sound of its enormous wheels a low _chug chug chug_ in Karen’s ears. The car on their right was a convertible and the passengers struggled to pull up the ragtop. Occasionally there was a distant flash of light in the clouds and the smell of ozone.

With the radio gone there was nothing to do but talk, or else ignore each other completely. They did a bit of both, dropping in and out of conversation as they saw fit. A couple hours in the storm - which showed no signs of letting up - Frank cast a sideways glance at her and asked a baffling question.

“So, are you still seeing that lawyer?”

Karen stared at him, openly. “... what?”

“Murdock? Are you still -” he caught sight of her expression and directed his eyes back to the road. “Nevermind.”

“No, I’m not still dating Matt,” she said. “Why did you want to know?”

Frank looked incredibly uncomfortable, but he was the one who brought it up so she didn’t feel bad for him. “He’s a good guy, Karen.”

She squinted at him. “He didn’t bother to show up to your trial. Why are you defending him?”

“It’s me who fucked that up, not Murdock,” he said. “It wouldn’t have mattered if he decided to be there every day.”

“Well, that’s - forgiving of you,” she said. “But Matt had a responsibility -”

“I know he’s Daredevil,” Frank said, and Karen was very glad she wasn’t the one driving because she would have gone off the road.

She gaped at him. Her eyes must have been bugging out of her head. What the _fuck_. “You - you know - _how_.”

“It’s not _rocket science_ ,” he said. “I recognized his voice. That red jumpsuit isn’t the disguise he thinks it is.”

“I didn’t know!” Karen said. “Not until he _told_ me. Jesus Christ, now I feel like an idiot. I thought he was cheating on me.” Not that cheating would have explained anything, but it had been the only explanation she could come up with at the time. She still wasn’t clear on what he had been mixed up in. Who was the woman in his bed? Who was the old man, the one who let her into the apartment? Matt had been living a life she didn’t even know existed. She still didn’t know what to do with that.

“You’re not an idiot,” Frank said. “I only to mean to say that he had reasons for doing what he did.”

“Yes,” she said. “But so did I. I never - I never actually saw Matt clearly. I saw who I wanted him to be. And he did the exact same thing with me. It’s like we were stumbling around in the dark, missing each other every time. Or like I was wearing a mask without realizing it. Can you understand that, Frank?”

“Of course I can,” he said. “I was a soldier. I used to come home and - I could _not_ talk to my family about the things I’d seen, okay? Or the things I did. You learn to keep it where nobody can see it. You move forward. Didn’t mean that my relationships with those people weren’t real. And now they’re gone and all I have is -”

“The mission,” said Karen.

“Yeah,” he said. “The mission. But you can have more than that. You _should_ have more than that.”

“How long is it supposed to last?” she asked. “When do you stop? And what are you going to do afterwards?”

“Why are you on this again?” he asked.

“Because you never gave me an answer before,” she said.

“I don’t have an answer now!” he said, frustrated. “I didn’t think about after. I wanted -” He stopped, his jaw tense. “I wanted it to end. To be over.”

“Well,” said Karen. “That’s just great.”

He glared at her and she responded in kind, because she never did know when to leave well enough alone.

“Tell me one thing,” she said, “did all that killing do something for you, Frank? Did it help?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit. I don’t believe you. Revenge doesn’t do shit.”

“You don’t think it does, huh? How would you know?”

“Because it didn’t help _me_ ,” she snapped.

Frank pulled over, onto the shoulder of the highway and then into the field beyond. The car rolled to a slow stop. Karen wrapped her arms around her middle and wouldn’t look at him.

“Say that again?” he asked.

But she didn’t; she felt suddenly ill, like she was going to vomit, so she threw open the car door and lurched out onto the the wet grass.

She could hear Frank say her name, startled. Her feet went out from under her and she fell to her knees. She was shivering. Her hair hung around her face, stringy from the rain, and she shut her eyes. Counted to ten. Tried to breathe.

“Hey,” Frank said, kneeling down behind her. His hands on her back felt very warm. “How ‘bout you come back to the car.”

“You’re getting wet,” she said. Her teeth were chattering.

“So are you,” he said, and helped her up.

In the car he turned the heat up. She wiped the water dripping off her nose away with the side of her hand. It was some time before she said anything.

“Wilson Fisk had a - I don’t know what he was. An assistant. Or a lackey, whatever you’d call it. His name was James Wesley. I killed him. Shot him.”

“Why?” Frank asked. Not judging her; like this was just something people did. She supposed for him it was.

Karen swallowed, hard. “He kidnapped me. Because I was working with Ben Urich to investigate Fisk. He threatened me and everyone I cared about. And then he handed me a gun - he didn’t think I’d do it. But I did.”

“I don’t see how any of that is your fault,” Frank said. “Seems like self defense to me.”

“If I hadn’t gone against Fisk then Ben would still be alive,” she said. “And I never would have met James Wesley in the first place.”

“You think it’d be better if you’d ignored it?” Frank asked. “If you looked away, the way other people do?”

“Maybe,” said Karen. “They seem to get along fine. But he was hurting people.” She thought of poor Mrs. Cardenas, lying cold and pale in the morgue.

Frank looked past her, at the rain sluicing down the window in streaks. “Wilson Fisk let me out of prison.”

“What?” she said. “That doesn’t make any sense. I thought he attacked you?”

“He did both,” said Frank. “I’m not saying it makes sense, except to him. He thought he could could use me to get rid of his rivals, something like that. And I went with it. Because I needed to find the men who took my family away from me. And because I was never going to get out clean anyway.”

“No one does,” said Karen. She pulled her hair back, away from her face. “Why are you helping me, Frank? What’s in it for you?”

“One good turn deserves another,” he said. “And maybe I want to say thank you.”

 

 

They went straight to a motel, after that. No one was in the mood to do any more driving. The walls inside were painted builder’s beige and the bedframes were old, heavy wooden things. Whomever had chosen the decor really liked florals; they were on the comforter, the armchair in the corner and in framed pictures in the bathroom. The room had a kitchenette, and Karen made herself some hot coffee while Frank stood sentry at the window again. Like he had last time.

“Frank,” Karen said. He looked over at her. “Get away from there. No one is coming after us.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit.”

Karen dried off with a towel and changed into her pyjamas. She avoided looking at her reflection in the chipped mirror.

Frank headed back out into the downpour in search of food. “I don’t think this place has room service,” he said. He came back with fried rice from somewhere and they ate without talking. Karen had turned on the television and it droned away in the background.

Later, when the sun had set behind the clouds and the lights were off; when they lay in their respective beds, he spoke. Karen didn’t know whether she was supposed to hear him or not.

“You’re a good person, Karen,” he said, offering his words up to the darkness. “You’re not like me.”

She didn’t answer, and pretended to be asleep.

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this taking so long. And to the good people of Savannah; sorry for insulting your fountain.

 

 

 

Frank started acting weird when they got to Savannah. He should have stopped for lunch and then kept going; they were close enough to the border to be in Florida very soon. Instead he pulled over, in front of a bed and breakfast that wasn’t exactly their usual fare. The menu by the door advertised blue cheese on steak and lobster bisque - she’d never seen Frank eat something fancier than a hamburger. Hell, there were lace curtains in the windows.

“Want to check it out?” he asked. “It got a good rating online.”

“Online?” she said. “Wait, did you use my computer?”

“No,” he said. “Your phone, before you woke up this morning.”

“Frank!”

“Relax,” he said. “I didn’t look at anything else. You should put a password lock on it, though.”

She looked back at the building, the old brick facade and green shutters. It _was_ nice. And she was tired of diner food. Punishing him by saying no would only be punishing herself.

“Fine,” she said. “Don’t ever use my phone without my permission again.”

“I won’t.”

“Good,” she said, and got out of the car.

Frank didn’t look as odd as he should have, walking to that little iron-wrought table with its vase of daffodils. But then, there were plenty of tourists in the restaurant - men and women in baseball caps and clothes too heavy for the Georgia weather. They looked like a vacationing couple enjoying the beautiful city for the weekend.

Karen glanced at him over the top of her menu. He must have done things like that all the time, before. Road trips with the kids piled into the backseat, playing punch-buggy or counting horses as they went past.

The waitress asked what brought them to town as soon as she heard their decidedly non-local accents. Frank spun her some yarn about a second honeymoon that came about because his deployment had cut their first one short. She looked very charmed.

“You’re barely old enough for a first one,” she said to Karen, filling her mug with dark, fresh coffee.

“She’s older than she looks,” said Frank. “Trust me.” Karen knocked her foot against his under the table.

“Now for the divorce,” said Karen, and the waitress laughed. She left some bread and butter on the table and moved on to the next customer.

“Waitresses sure seem to like you,” Karen said. She ripped a piece of bread in half and spread butter on it. Both were homemade, and heavenly. “You must act like the type who tips well.”

“Lots of people like me,” said Frank.

Karen had crab stew and a glass of white wine so good that she forgave Frank’s transgressions against her personal technology. They got back in the car, but only to move it out on the street into a public parking spot.

“Really?” Karen asked. “What do you want to do now?”

He shrugged. “Figured we could check out the place,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon walking. Just that - walking the streets, browsing through kitschy shops, taking in the Historic district with its gingerbread houses. Architecture imported from a colder climate in another age. An even bloodier one than their own, though Karen was probably ruining all the prettiness by thinking so.

Forsyth park was a highlight. Everything was cool and green. They strolled over shady paths under the protection of long, winding branches hung with spanish moss. There were gardens, picnic areas, even a tennis court. Karen got an ice-cream and they stopped in front of the fountain to rest.

The fountain itself was an obnoxious Victorian monstrosity that would have been out of place almost anywhere else. On the top section stood a woman with either a sword or a torch - Justice, perhaps - and the base was surrounded by bearded mermen spewing water from their trumpets. But the softness of the park, all that carefully planned greenery, gentled the overkill of the fountain’s design. It was a postcard, someone’s fantasy of the South.

“Where to now?” Karen asked. She had started out humoring Frank, but she was also genuinely curious as to what his intentions were. Like most things about him, they were buried deep.

“We haven’t seen the river yet,” he said. And off they went.

The river was grey-blue beneath the calm sky. It was starting to tip towards evening but the sun was still high. A breeze came off the water and Karen tilted towards it, shielding her eyes from the glare so she could look out. There were actual riverboats, two stories high and edged with red or blue.

Even if they left soon they’d be driving in the dark. Not that Frank minded, but she wondered if that was what he had planned.

“You want to grab dinner before we go?” she asked.

“We could stay here tonight,” he said. “Won’t really make a difference; not like we got people waiting on us in Florida to show up.”

Karen leaned back against the railing and gave him a sharp look. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “You know what I mean.”

He took a second to himself and seemed to be considering the value of bullshitting. But it wasn’t Frank’s natural milieu, she was discovering. He could lie, and he could lie well. Yet given the choice he would rather tell the truth, even if it was blunt and ugly. They had that in common.

“You looked like you could use a break,” he said. “Some down time.”

Karen turned her face away. Suddenly her eyes were stinging. She got herself under control, quickly.

“You want to, we’ll get back on the road,” he said. He folded his arms over the railing, relaxed, and watched a sailboat pass. “It’s your case.”

“No,” she said. “No. We’ll stay.”

 

 

They ended up in some neighborhood dive after dinner. It reminded her of Josie’s, a little bit, except with a singing fish hanging on the wall and presumably less salmonella on the glasses. Karen had a beer and challenged Frank to a game of pool. When he turned out to be very good at it she started cheating to even the odds.

“You can’t do that,” he said, as she leaned across the table and rolled her ball into the pocket. “Okay, you _really_ can’t do that.”

“Says who?” she said. “Try and stop me.” And she did it again.

He huffed out a laugh. “Now you got it all screwed up. I couldn’t fix it if I wanted to.”

“Another drink?” she said, and they put their cues away and sat at the bar. Karen got a vodka martini this time.

“Shouldn’t mix your liquors,” Frank pointed out. “It’ll make you sick.”

“That’s for hard liquor,” Karen said. “Beer doesn’t count.”

“If you say so,” said Frank. He looked around the room casually. There was a mix of nondescript regulars, out-of-towners and a few local eccentrics. A woman at a table in the back corner was dressed exactly like she was going to church, and kept ordering water with lime in it. When Karen was young she used to make up stories in her head about interesting people like that, the ones who seemed to have something out of the ordinary going on. “You ever come out this way before?” he asked.

“Savannah?” she asked. “No. But I did go to Florida one spring break in college.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We had fun.” She paused, and then threw caution to the wind. “I flashed a guy on the drive up.”

“What?” he said. “I don’t believe that for a _second_.”

“Yeah, my friends didn’t think I would either,” said Karen. “But I did.” They’d been in a convertible, four girls tossing increasingly ridiculous dares at each other. Everyone’s jaw had dropped when shy little Karen Page stood up and took her swimsuit top off. God, had she ever been that carefree? She could remember shrieking with laughter afterwards, her face flushed hot at her own daring. “It was so stupid. I’m lucky we didn’t get spotted by the Highway Patrol.”

There was a discarded penny on the edge of the bar. Frank picked the coin up and spun it on its edge. It teetered sideways and fell against a bowl of peanuts. “I joined up, right out of high school. There was never any other option for me.”

“Do you come from a military background?” she asked. She could see that, a row of pictures in a hallway of various Castles in uniform. But she hadn’t come across anything similar when she was in his house.

“No,” he said. “I just wanted to be Captain America.”

 

 

It was starting to drizzle when they left. Not real rain so much as a light mist. Frank gave Karen his jacket anyway. She didn’t do it up, but wrapped it around her as they walked to the car.

“Thank you for today,” she said. “I didn’t know how badly I wanted time off.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Not really.”

Karen had been drinking but she felt remarkably clearheaded. For the first time in a long, long while. And Frank was responsible for that.

Maybe that was why she kissed him once they got back to the hotel.

It happened right after they got in the door. Karen was giving Frank his jacket back and she leaned in and just - just did it. A brief kiss, on the mouth. Like a kiss goodnight or goodbye.

Frank startled against her. He looked completely shocked, and some small dark part of Karen was glad she could take him by surprise. That she wasn’t as predictable as everyone thought she was.

“ _Karen_ ,” he said, “what’re you doing?”

“What does it look like?” she asked. Because she wasn’t afraid.

“This is a bad idea,” he said, turning his face away.

Karen put her hand on his cheek. “I know. But when do I let that stop me?”

He picked her up, abruptly, and carried her to the bed. She tucked her head against his shoulder and snickered. “Very caveman of you.”

“Thought you might like that,’ he murmured, and kissed her as he put her down. Karen pulled her dress over her head and lay down. The sheets were cool against her back, and Frank’s hands were warm on her skin. They were shaking and she pretended not to notice. She undressed him at speed, a tiny bit clumsy. Now was not the time for finesse.

For a while they rocked together, almost languid. She ran her palms down his back and catalogued all his scars by touch. It was like having a suddenly tame tiger under under her fingers. She had seen him do such violence; there were no illusions in her mind about how dangerous he could be. And yet here she was.

They didn’t have any condoms. It wasn’t like either of them were _planning_ this turn of events. So Frank slid two fingers inside of her, slowly, giving her time to adjust.

Karen made a soft noise, her spine arching. Sweat was starting to break out on her skin; he licked it off her collarbones. Bit his way down to her breasts. “God, yes,” she said.

He chuckled. “You want more?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I want more.”

Frank pushed her leg back with his free hand, spreading her wide open. He fucked her steady and deep, his thumb pressing down on her clit in the most perfect way. She trembled and grabbed fistfulls of blanket. Cursed his name when he wouldn’t go faster. “Come on, come on,” she pleaded, nipping at his mouth when he pressed it against hers.

“Shhh, okay,” he said, “okay, here -”

“Oh, fuck yes,” she said, when he stroked in just right and sent off sparks behind her eyes. She whined and lifted her hips. She was so wet she could hear it -

\- he rubbed her clit and the same time and she came, clenching around his fingers, biting her lower lip until it stung. “Oh. _Oh_.” She had to shiver through the aftershocks for a minute, too sensitive to be touched.

“You look good like that,” he said, and she pounced on him. She wrestled him onto his back - he was obviously letting her win, which was nice - and stroked him hard and fast until his head fell back against the pillows. His eyes were closed.

“Too bad I can’t ride you,” she said, wistfully. “Oh well. Maybe another time.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” he said, and came. There was something to it beyond the ordinary release of tension. Like he was breaking apart and reforming.

 

 

“So,” she said, later on, when she was lying back against his chest. “You wanted to be Captain America?”

He laughed into her hair. “I’m not admitting _anything_ ,” he said.

 

 

Frank slowed the car as they approached the state line. “You ready for this?” he asked.

Karen took a deep breath. She couldn’t say that she knew what she was walking into, because she didn’t. And becoming a thorn in the side of a prominent gangster hadn’t worked out for her before. But she had to know. She had spent too much of her life running and hiding already. Ultimately the decision was an easy one.

“Yes,” she said, firmly.

Frank hit the gas. They plunged into Florida’s swimming pool heat.

 

 

Silvio Manfredi lived in West Tampa with his eldest son. The house was a modest bungalow with a lot of airy windows and plants out front. When Frank and Karen pulled up he was watering the garden in his pyjamas and a bathrobe. He squinted at Karen as she came up the walk, the hose held loosely in his hand. And he didn’t seem particularly perturbed, not even with Frank standing by the car and glowering pre-emptively.

“Mr. Manfredi?” she asked. “My name is Karen Page. I work for the _Bulletin_ -”

“Ben’s friend,” he said. “From the funeral. I remember you now. Couldn’t see you right, coming towards me; my glasses are inside the house.”

Karen gave him a smile, the correct application of which could get her as far as any trick in repertoire. “I’m clearly interrupting. Sorry for dropping in on you so early.”

“It’s fine,” he said, and bent down to turn the water off. “What was it you wanted? Is it about Ben?”

“No,” said Karen. “This is about current events, I’m afraid. Something happening in Hell’s Kitchen right now.”

“Huh,” he said. “So some kinda story you’re working on?” He gave her a sharp look. “I’m out of that life, have been for years. You think Ben would have asked me to be a pallbearer if I wasn’t?”

“I imagine not,” murmured Karen, and tried to sound contrite. She kept an eye on his reaction. “If I’ve offended you -”

“Ah,” said Manfredi, and waved her off. “It’s an old sore spot, I guess. And Ben probably made me a pallbearer so I’d have to carry something heavy. That would be just his style.” He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “I still don’t think I can help you. I haven’t been back to New York but a couple of times since I moved, and one of those was the funeral. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m out.”

“Your name came up during one of my investigations,” Karen said. She paused, but decided Manfredi might have sympathy. He seemed like it, which was not what she had expected. “Not one related to my job. I’m being threatened.”

“Like Ben was,” said Manfredi. “Okay. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. But I make no promises, and I’m not standing in the driveway like a _coglione_.”

“Sure,” said Karen, brightly. “We can go inside.” She didn’t feel she was under any danger from him. Also she had her gun tucked squarely in her purse, just like she had promised.

Manfredi looked over her shoulder. “I guess your cop buddy will want to come too?”

Frank was leaning back against the car, his arms crossed. “Cop?” said Karen. “Oh - the haircut, right?”

Manfredi tapped the end of his nose. “I can smell ‘em at this point. Smart of you to bring him, though. You’re no dummy.”

The inside of the house was nicer than the outside. It had been renovated and modernized - the fixtures were new and so was the furniture. Karen sank into the cushions of a cream-colored couch and Frank sat beside her. Manfredi took an armchair next to a potted palm.

“Joe,” he called out, in the general direction of the kitchen. “Put some coffee on, would ya? We got guests.”

Joe Manfredi looked like a younger version of his father, but taller and more relaxed. He was starting to get touches of gray at his temples. He came out with a coffee pot in one hand and a couple of mugs in the other.

“This is Karen Page,” said Manfredi. “She was a friend of Ben Urich’s. You remember Ben.”

“Sure do,” said Joe, as he shook Karen’s hand. “I was sorry to hear that he passed.”

“And this is - uh -” Manfredi gestured to Frank.

“Frank.”

_Jesus_ , thought Karen. Couldn’t he at least choose another name? But neither of them gave any indication of recognizing him.

“Yeah,” said Manfredi. “Her bodyguard.”

Karen smiled again. “Not quite.”

“Karen’s a writer,” said Manfredi. “Like you, Joe. Except for the paper Ben used to work at.” There was a soft note of pride in his voice when he said it. _Like you, Joe_. Apparently crime wasn’t a family business after all.

“Oh, what do you write?” Karen asked.

“Nonfiction,” Joe said. “Sometimes creative, sometimes not. Urban environments are my subject - my last book was on the Jazz Age and prohibition in New Orleans”

“That sounds interesting.”

“Only to me,” Joe said, with humor. “Can’t say I’ve read any of your bylines - I hole up when I’m working on something. Too many distractions otherwise.”

“Yeah, me neither,” said his father. “The news is too fucking depressing, especially in New York.”

“I don’t disagree,” Karen said, and accepted her coffee. Frank put his on the coffee table without drinking any. He was laser-focused, and the pleasantness of the encounter hadn’t dulled his instincts one bit.

“But if Ben thought you were somebody, you must be,” said Manfredi. “He wasn’t easy to please. Now. What is it that you wanted from me?”

“I want to know why you were in New York recently,” said Karen. “And I want to know why your name came up when I was talking to my source. Because someone took a shot at me - and Frank, here - and I can’t let that pass.”

Her omission of Foggy’s involvement was deliberate. She would go a long way to keep him as safe as possible.

Manfredi’s eyebrows raised. “Shit,” he said. “That is serious. Has nothing to do with me, though. I never had any beef with you. I only ever saw you at Ben’s service.”

“I think this is my fault,” said Joe.

They all looked at him, and he went ruddy in the face. “Not the shooting,” he said, in a rush. “I have nothing to do with - god, of course not. I mean that I went back to New York with Dad for research on my new project. Which must be why his name came up.”

“What project?” Frank asked, the first time he’d bothered to speak since they arrived, Karen was reminded how intimidating he could be.

“I’m writing about organized crime,” he said. “The history of it, not a tell-all. Though my family’ll have to be in there, yeah. I know that’s why people are gonna buy the book. I wanted to see what was going on there now, especially after Wilson Fisk -”

“- went to jail,” said Karen. “Yes. I helped with that. Or my former law firm did.”

“Good for you, honey,” said Manfredi. His son gave him a dubious glance. “What?” he said. “Fisk’s a goddamned animal. She performed a public service.”

“Thanks,” said Karen. “But two of his former foot soldiers tried to kill me, so I’d be lying if I claimed it worked out for me that great. What _is_ going on?”

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” said Manfredi. “Or so Joe tells me. What’s happening is everyone is vying for their place at the head table. I put the word out on the street to find out who. I was, uh - maybe kind of harsh.”

“Really harsh,’ said Joe. “And I told you not to be.”

“That’s the only way you can talk to these people,” Manfredi protested. “Believe me, I know.”

“So there’s a power struggle,’ said Karen. “Including with Jason Theriault and Marcus Altowski? They no longer work for Fisk?”

“Those two assholes?” Manfredi asked. “They turned independent contractors as soon as Fisk got sent up the river. Everyone mentioned them and no one had anything nice to say. Big balls and no brains. Just like in the seventies when the Westies were going nuts.” He sighed. “There’s no loyalty anymore.”

“I bet,” said Frank. Karen nudged him in the ankle with her foot.

“This is very helpful,” she said. “But I’m not seeing what it has to do with my situation.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Manfredi said. “You took down the big man, and that makes you a walking target. Because who’s to say they aren’t next? And I know the type,” he said. “They always have to prove how tough they are.”

“So take out the enemies of the old boss,” she said. “Display them at the gates, metaphorically. Or terrorize them until they leave town.”

“Bingo,” said Manfredi. “And then everyone will know you aren’t to be trifled with. They’re all flash and no substance, these guys. Men who can’t think of the game like a business; no longevity. But that means you won’t have to worry about them for much longer.”

“No?”

“Oh, hell no,” said Manfredi. “They’ll either implode or someone else will do you the favor of taking them out. If you can’t get the cops to listen to you then I say hunker down for a while. Me, I’d kick back on a beach somewhere. And let dog eat dog.”

 

 

Manfredi walked back to the car with her and Frank. “You _do_ remind me of Ben,” he said. “He’d have done just this same thing.”

“Yeah?” said Karen. “I learned from the best.”

“Back when he was first looking into me,” said Manfredi, “before the arrest, before everything - I invited him to a barbeque at my house. I was only making fun - I wasn’t taking him seriously. Who would have? He was a skinny kid in glasses. Barely out of college.”

“But he went,” said Karen.

“Are you kidding?” said Manfredi. “That son of a bitch strolled right into my backyard and sat down next to old Don Maggia. And then he told me he liked his steak medium-rare.”

 

 

Karen zipped her bag up and tucked the envelope she was holding under her arm. “That’s it,” she told Frank, who was standing in the doorway. “I’m done.”

“You get everything you needed?”

“I got enough,” she said. The beds were made. They were packed, and he had already checked out. There was nothing else to be done. “Want to know what’s in the envelope?”

His mouth curved up in a smile. “Would you tell me if I asked?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thought so.”

What was in the envelope was Karen’s typed-up notes from her investigation. What was in the envelope were Altowski’s and Theriault’s mugshots and criminal histories and all the surveillance she had been able to pry out of Frank . It was addressed to Wilson Fisk, care of his lawyer. She suspected he would be very interested in his former employees extracurricular activities.

Dog might eat dog, but that didn’t mean she had to sit around and wait for it to happen.

She wasn’t sure, at first, that this was her way out. It felt like crossing a line. It _was_ crossing a line; one she would never be able to get back over. But she thought about the people like Foggy, who got hurt for trying help the neighborhood he loved so much. She thought about Brett, so overloaded at the police station that he could barely find his own feet. All those people who risked themselves to try and salvage what good they could from the world. They deserved better.

Karen could step up. There would be a cost - but there always was.

“I have to buy some stamps,” she said. “I want to get this in the mail before we leave.”

“Anything else?” Frank asked. He reached out and slid her sunglasses down, out of her hair and onto the bridge of her nose.

They hadn’t talked about their night together. And maybe they wouldn’t; Karen was finding she and Frank didn’t always need to talk to understand each other. Whatever they had wasn’t going to last forever. But neither did anything else.

“No,” said Karen. “It’s time to go home.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
